Hemingway: 5 places where he lived, drank and wrote

Posted: June 22, 2014 4:00 a.m.

FILE - This July 21, 2012 file photo shows bartender Alejandro Bolivar preparing a daiquiri at El Floridita tavern in Old Havana, Cuba, to honor the 195th anniversary of the bar and the anniversary of the birth of its most famous frequent customer, novelist Ernest Hemingway, of whom a life-sized sculpture sits barside. Legend has it that Hemingway once downed 13 doubles in one sitting. There are sites connected to Hemingway in many different locales including Florida, Cuba, Arkansas, Idaho and Illinois. (AP Photo/Franklin Reyes, File)

Associated Press

Ernest Hemingway lived, drank, fished and wrote in many locales around the country and the world. One of his most celebrated haunts is Key West, Florida, where the late writer’s birthday is marked each July with a Hemingway look-alike contest and other festivities, some held at one of his favorite bars. But fans following the Hemingway trail will also find museums, homes and other places connected to him in Illinois, Idaho, Arkansas and Cuba. Here’s a list.

FLORIDA

This year marks Key West’s 34th annual Hemingway Days celebration, planned for July 15-20, www.hemingwaydays.net.

The “Papa” Hemingway Look-Alike Contest starts July 17, at Sloppy Joe’s Bar, the writer’s hangout at 201 Duval St. About 125 bearded contestants compete during preliminary rounds July 17 and 18, with finals July 19.

Also July 19 is the “Running of the Bulls” with man-made bulls on wheels, a nod to the bull run in Spain Hemingway described in “The Sun Also Rises.” Other events include a 5K run, paddle-board race and marlin-fishing tournament, July 16-19, honoring Hemingway’s love of deep-sea fishing.

The Hemingway Home at 907 Whitehead St., where he lived from 1931 to 1939, offers daily tours, www.hemingwayhome
.com. (The home and grounds are famous for housing many six-toed cats, just like a cat Hemingway once owned.) The Custom House Museum, 281 Front St., has a Hemingway exhibit as well.

ILLINOIS

Hemingway was born July 21, 1899 in Oak Park, Illinois. He left at age 18 to become a reporter at the Kansas City Star, reportedly disparaging of his hometown as a place of “wide lawns and narrow minds.” Fans can visit the home where he lived for six years, along with a museum, on Oak Park Avenue, Sunday to Friday 1 p.m.-5 p.m. and Saturdays 10 a.m.-5 p.m., www.ehfop.org.

ARKANSAS

Hemingway and his second wife, Pauline Pfeiffer, often visited her family home in Piggott, Arkansas. Today the site is the Hemingway-Pfeiffer Museum, restored to how it would have looked in the late 1920s and ’30s. The property includes a barn-turned-studio where Hemingway sometimes wrote.

Shortly before his 62nd birthday in 1961, Hemingway killed himself, putting a shotgun to his head in the small entryway of his final home in the mountain resort town Ketchum. The house, owned by The Nature Conservancy, is closed to the public, a stipulation Hemingway’s fourth wife, Mary Hemingway, made in donating it after her death in 1986.

The Community Library runs an annual Ernest Hemingway Symposium, this year Sept. 4-6, with tours of Hemingway haunts, lectures and skeet shooting. A mile away is Sun Valley Resort, where Hemingway wrote much of “For Whom the Bell Tolls” in suite 206. The room has a bronze bust of Hemingway, a typewriter and photos, and can be rented through August for about $600 a night.

He’s buried in the Ketchum Cemetery, surrounded by graves of locals he befriended.

CUBA

Travel to Cuba for Americans is mostly limited to organized cultural exchanges called “people-to-people” tours, but some tours have included Hemingway landmarks in Havana. Visitors are not allowed inside the house at Finca Vigia, his sprawling hilltop estate. His fishing boat, the Pilar, sits poolside on the lush grounds.

Hemingway’s preferred watering hole was El Floridita bar, the Old Havana birthplace of the daiquiri, where legend claims he once downed 13 doubles in one sitting. Bartenders mix up a cold one each day and set it next to a statue of the author. Across the Bay of Havana in Cojimar, a sleepy fishing village, Hemingway found inspiration for “The Old Man and the Sea.” La Terraza, a restaurant he liked, has a bust of “Papa.”